[LRUG] Rails / Web outsourcing

[Matthew O'Riordan]

Hi Don

In response to your question:
>> Whilst the distance has not been an issue to date, I think the time zone gap has been a bit problematic.
> Care to share any specific problems that you’ve run into?

The problems have all been centred around communication and inability to problem solve as a team.  Over the last year or so I have been working extensively with one business partner who is in the UK along with a number of other developers spread around the UK working primarily on our core product technology. The team who have been building the website are based in Hong Kong. We all work remotely, and for a large period I was based in France, so face to face meetings very rarely happen and as a entirely remote team I do feel everything has largely worked really well.  However, I have personally found it much harder to work with the team in Hong Kong for the following reasons:

We use Skype extensively throughout the day to problem solve and brainstorm ideas.  Because of the time zone differences, it has been difficult to do this with the Hong Kong team, and as such we’ve slipped into a pattern of using email, Basecamp, Trello to communicate.  This works well for task lists and basic knowledge transfer, but I have found it works terribly when you are solving problems as a team and collectively agreeing on new ideas.  
When we have a complex idea to communicate or knowledge to transfer that has a lot of breadth, I have unfortunately found that the transferrer of information often ends up spending an incredible amount of time writing up documents to communicate this information that are typically not read until they are needed.  As a result, the information is not really shared because it places the onus on the receivers of the information to proactively read and understand what is being communicated, so typically this does not happen until that person finds they now need to understand the document.  This in itself is not a huge problem as documentation is a great way to share information, however I have often found that because we are moving so fast and making changes to our product, by the time the document is needed it is often out of date or is missing critical information that would have been unearthed if a conversation was had instead.
Having your team online at loosely the same time as you every day gives you a sense of working as a team.  It is hard to quantify this, but I definitely feel closer and more connected to people I talk to throughout the day on Skype and Slack.  Knowing that you cannot chat to a team member when you need their help and thus have to wait for the next working day every time you need help is just a bit frustrating and can waste a lot of time.  Also, because I talk to the team every day, I have much more of a sense of them being colleagues as opposed to an outsourced resource that gives me updates via email.  In reality the team in Hong Kong were far from an outsourced resource, but because our modus operandi became email & Basecamp ping pong, it started to feel that way.

I realise all of the above is surmountable, and I was under no illusion when I set out that the time zone would not be an issue.  However, now that I have to reconsider who I am going to work with moving forwards for the website, I think my preference would be someone or a team who can communicate well on all forms of our common communication email, Basecamp, Slack and Skype and is mostly available around the same time the rest of the team is working.  I just think it’s easier.

Matthew O'Riordan
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